A disturbing if sometimes trite story of a country girl who goes to boarding school in 1930's China, gets treated like crap and is eventually pushed out of the school, all because she is low class and her hands, stained by the dye her family uses to put her through school, are ugly. Rob and Lee unpack this story of class and mistreatment for this week's podcast. 

This week, we look at one of the most famous writers in modern China. It is surprising that we have not tackled Shen Congwen before...he was in contention for China's first Nobel Prize for Literature until his death in 1988. The reason we have not discussed him is, despite his importance to Chinese literature, neither of us really like him. Listen as we work through why Shen Congwen is really valuable to read, even if we don't like him. 

This week, we are discussing a story from Ken Liu's Invisible Planets, a collection of science fiction short stories that he recently translated and published. Chen Qiufan's "The Year of the Rat" is a weird story that may or may not be science fiction but is definitely worth reading for everything it tries to say about Chinese politics.

Part Two of our miniseries on Bai Juyi: this week we look at a poem of biting satire that is a good example of Bai's more polemical poetry. Bai was eventually exiled for some of the poetry he wrote (not this poem, but an equally cutting poem). Listen as we try to work through Bai Juyi's artistry and politics in this week's edition of the Chinese Literature Podcast.